Wizard's Blood [Part Two] (85 page)

“
Our library,” the dragon said. He handed Jolan
a pairing-crystal
.

“
This is not the usual way to do this, but I have learned this is an approach you are familiar with. This crystal will allow you to learn our language, and while you will never be able to duplicate the sounds to speak it, you will be able to read and understand the spoken sounds. Put it somewhere safe until the day comes you need it. One of those marvelous Mage’s Boxes would be perfect. I have authorized you for certain types of materials. You have a background different from anyone on Gaea, and you might find the history of the dragon world and our little group of interest. There is also a complete history of Gaea since our arrival. Maybe you can spread that to the rest of the Settled Lands. Knowing the past can often prevent a repeat of mistakes that have been made.”

“
I have authorized your access to some of our technology, but not all. Past experience has shown that races do not do well when too much advanced knowledge suddenly floods their world. This is something we must talk of further. The Nexus has been used to bring too much from Earth. It will be a destabilizing influence if it continues. In the past, the two worlds while very different, were more closely aligned. Earth has advanced much beyond Gaea. I would suggest you consider shutting the Nexus down. We should have done so, but it is the only beacon that might be seen at our home, and we held out that last hope. It no longer matters. Help will not be coming for us. I suspect we are in a place where the signals are not getting where we want them to go.”

“
You didn’t want the others to see this?”

“
Some of what is in here is not for them. It will be up to you to decide what might be safely shared. Err on the side of caution. Allow Gaea to advance on its own.”

Iach-Iss escorted Jolan out of the reading room and closed the door. He smiled, and led them back out to the open area where Asari indicated they had finished the loading and they could leave at any time. Nothing was said about the private minutes Jolan and Iach-iss had shared, but Jolan couldn’t help wondering about the dragon’s motivation. It was almost as if Iach-Iss knew that his chances of returning here to the dragon’s nest were small.

* * * *

Asari climbed into the scout with Den-Orok and Jolan boarded the second vehicle with Iach-Iss. Jolan was certain this had been arranged and that the dragon had more things he would like to speak privately with him about. He was directed to the huge chair opposite the pilot’s seat where the two would be able to communicate easily, although Jolan suspected there was an internal system that would make that possible regardless of where he sat. On the other hand, the dragons might rely heavily on their telepathic abilities. This seemed the kind of environment that was well suited to the ability.

Jolan settled into the seat that was easily wide enough for two humans. Iach-Iss demonstrated the control that engaged the restraint. Once the control was activated, Jolan felt a slight pressure that held him securely in the seat, even though there were no seat belts or any other obvious means of holding him. He learned he would be secure even if the scout was flown upside down and the internal gravity system failed. A simple touch of the control would release the restraint and he could move out of the seat to wherever he desired. During this flight there would really be no need of the restraint as they would be performing no unusual maneuvers, and he would be able to get up and move around if he desired.

Once again Jolan was a bit unnerved by being put in a position where he was at the mercy of very old and neglected equipment. The scouts had sat unattended for a thousand years, and yet here they were about to make a flight across the whole of the Settled Lands as if the vehicles made the trip daily and any quirks were known. The dragons seemed to have implicit faith in the on-board intelligence to warn them of any anomalies, and when the scout said it was ready to go, Iach-Iss accepted the information as fact.

After a moment while Iach-Iss checked several holographic displays, the ship suddenly lifted ten feet off the surface and held there, seeming to wobble slightly which Jolan found disconcerting. Iach-Iss must have noticed his discomfort and said in his characteristic rumble, “Several of the lift modules were damaged the last time out and the scout wants to calibrate their functional state so it can compensate and plan for operations without them if needed. That is why we are wobbling a bit while it tries several combinations of power to the working modules.”

As he spoke the wobbling suddenly stopped and the scout settled into a completely stable hover. The dragon grinned at him as if to say “See, I told you.”

Jolan could see that Den-Orok and Asari were also hovering a short distance off to the side, and in a coordinated move which supported Jolan’s theory that the two dragons communicated their moves telepathically, the two scouts suddenly began to rise quickly toward the sky. Inside the scout it was completely quiet, and Jolan wondered what sounds were being generated outside. He would be interested to watch one of the vehicles from the ground. His own experience with aircraft suggested significant noise would have to be generated, but there was no reason the alien craft had to follow his experience. The flight was quite smooth, without the random bumps and thumps as they passed through the clouds that Jolan was used to in his smaller aircraft.

Once again Jolan was impressed by the incredible field of view the passengers were afforded by the holographic screens. He was able to see all around him as they rapidly passed through the barrier that protected the Dragon’s Nest, and for the first time he saw the solid rock mountain that appeared behind and below them. He would never have guessed what lay hidden behind that projection. Within minutes they passed through an altitude of ten thousand feet and continued to climb as the vehicles started their journey southward to greet the ship before the longer journey northward to Cobalo.

In a matter of minutes they reached the coast, and with little difficulty located the
Wave Runner
still anchored where they had left her some weeks before. They could see the crew running along the beach and pointing as they came in for a landing. The brief hour spent with the crew was time well spent in Jolan’s mind, and as they lifted into the air again, he thought of the men and the long journey home they would have compared to the couple of hours flying time he and Asari would require.

Iach-Iss had said they could make the trip faster than planned if they pushed the vehicles, but they were old and damaged in multiple ways and could see no gain in pushing them to the limit. They would cruise at a speed that would take them from the dragon’s home to the College in Cobalo in about three hours. It was considerably longer than the portals required, but given the time it had taken to travel by ship and then make their way through the jungle of the Lost Territories, this was indeed a quick return home.

It wasn’t long before they crossed out of the valley and started their journey over the high mountains. Soon enough Jolan could see the Great Lake off to the left below. From the normal view provided by the hologram the lake continued to look full, but Iach-Iss pointed to a secondary hologram that showed the view as it really was. They had told the dragons what they had done, and Iach-Iss had turned on some sensors that were able to penetrate the false view presented by Tishe’s glamour and show the area as it really appeared. The city looked drab and desolate below.

“
It is sad to see it looking like this,” Iach-Iss said. “It was the most beautiful city in all of Gaea at one time.”

As they flew, Jolan saw the second scout suddenly drop down and make a pass at one of the mountain peaks below. The dragon rumbled deep in his chest, a sound that Jolan knew was laughter.

“
Den-Orok is giving Asari lessons on the weapons. He is making a high speed pass to see how well he is able to lock the weapon onto a specific target.”

“
Maybe I should be learning the same thing,” Jolan said.

“
Perhaps, but there will be time. It won’t take that long since most of the function is under the control of the ship. It merely needs the operator to point out the desired targets. Under normal conditions where there are few targets and one is flying in space, the pilot can easily handle the task in addition to flying. Here, where a specific individual might need to be picked out of a mass of soldiers, it requires a dedicated eye.”

The dragon demonstrated the various aspects of the scout, including rotating the inner section so they were pointed backward while the vehicle continued onward. It wasn’t as disconcerting as Jolan had expected, but it still made him a bit uneasy to be traveling at high speed while facing the wrong way.

For the next hour, Iach-Iss engaged him in conversation. As Jolan had expected, the dragon had things on his mind. He wanted to know a great deal about Earth, and had some very specific questions that taxed Jolan’s physics background to answer. By the time they finished, Jolan was certain the dragon suspected that Gaea was more than just physically distant from his home. Their conversations had touched on a number of other topics as well, with the dragon passing on some very specific information that he felt Jolan needed to have.

Soon they crossed over the mountains at the edge of the sea inlet that hid the train tunnel that Jolan had been instrumental in getting built. They were less than an hour from home and Iach-Iss opened some kind of communications link between the two ships. Suddenly it was like Den-Orok and Asari were in the same room with them. They could converse as if they were sitting around a conference table rather than speaking to disembodied voices through a radio link.

Their plans had already been made, and Iach-Iss and Jolan would land first. They would put down in the central courtyard of the Inner Court, just across from the Council of Mages building. There was a large open spot there, and Shyar would have made certain that everyone was kept clear of the area. It would provide convenient access to the mages, and to the castle via the underground tunnels.

Almost too soon Jolan could see the southern harbor of Cobalo pass underneath the plane, and then ahead were the walls of the Inner Court. The dragon was shedding altitude rapidly, and within minutes they were dropping down toward the area that Jolan was pointing out.

“
It has changed a great deal,” Iach-Iss said as he brought the plane in for a landing. It appeared to Jolan that he was spending most of his time looking and doing very little flying, but that had to be because he simply communicated to the ship what he desired. Most of the effort was automatic. Jolan couldn’t help thinking it had to take some of the fun out of flying.

The scout hovered briefly over the grass and then slid sideways closer to the buildings. When Jolan liked the position, he indicated as much, and the dragon had the vehicle settle smoothly to the ground. Jolan had seen Shyar and Vaen standing on the steps near the entrance to the building. There were hundreds of other onlookers as well, so the word had to be out. It didn’t matter. There was no way to keep their arrival secret, and Cheurt already knew they had linked up with the dragons.

“
Let’s go meet your friends,” Iach-Iss said a moment later after Den-Orok brought his own ship down to settle in the grass a short distance away.

Jolan was surprised at the number of people that had turned out to witness the arrival of the legendary dragons. In retrospect he probably shouldn’t have been. Anyone who had heard of the arrival would want to see the last survivors of a race that had been the source of stories for all these years. Cheurt would soon know Jolan was back in Cobalo, and he would have to assume the dragons had come with him. If he had spies in the area they would only be confirming something the wizard leader already knew. For the hundredth time Jolan cursed himself for not knowing about the possibility of being spied upon. He could have prevented this constant observation had he known.

Jolan would have liked to keep things a bit more concealed for the sake of protecting the two dragons who had their own personal shields created by technology rather than magic, but which were nowhere near as strong as those of the scout ships. Since the ships had been damaged in the past, Jolan had to assume their personal shields could be defeated as well, especially if one or more of the triads had managed to slip into the area. Having Vaen and a few of the others out in the open bothered him greatly as well, but he was sure that Shyar had her own shields protecting the two of them. He would make coming up with some kind of security measures one of the first priorities once they learned where the dragons would be staying. Jolan was also a bit concerned that the two scout ships were out in the open, even though Iach-Iss had assured him that there were few wizards in existence that could cause much damage, even in their current degraded condition. In addition, the ships were programmed to immediately ascend to ten thousand feet if any attacks were launched in their direction.

As they walked toward the front of the building where Shyar waited, Jolan couldn’t help but overhear some of the remarks. Many were obviously surprised that the dragons were nothing like the creatures so often pictured both here and back on Earth. Many must have expected the flying lizards rather than somewhat human looking creatures that dwarfed their human counterparts. Shyar would have explained what to expect, but as the word of the dragon’s arrival spread, the details would have been lost.